The rim and floor of Gale Crater, seen from NASA’s Curiosity Rover. Credit: NASA The question of whether life once existed on Mars has captivated the imaginations of scientists and the public for decades. Central to the discovery is understanding the past climate of Earth’s neighbor: Was the planet warm and wet, with seas and … Read more
Wearing Boeing spacesuits, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (R) and Suni Williams depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center for Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to board the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft for the Crew Flight Test launch on June 5, 2024. Miguel J. … Read more
Wearing Boeing spacesuits, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (R) and Suni Williams depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center for Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to board the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft for the Crew Flight Test launch on June 5, 2024. Miguel J. … Read more
Fisher information achievable with single-qubit sensor. Credit: Physical assessment letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.260801 The idea of time travel has baffled sci-fi fans for years. Science tells us that traveling into the future is technically feasible—at least if you’re willing to travel close to the speed of light—but going back in time is a no-go. But … Read more
Snapshot taken by SLAC’s High Speed Electron Camera, an ultrashort electron diffraction (MeV-UED) instrument, showing evidence of circular polarization of terahertz light through an ultrathin sample of tungsten ditelluride. Source: Nano letters (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c00758 While taking snapshots with the high-speed electron camera at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory, researchers discovered new … Read more
This image shows the ultracold atomic quantum simulator. The red and blue balls represent the fermionic atoms with up and down spins respectively, arranged in a stacked pattern in 3D space, forming the antiferromagnetic crystal. The glass cell provides the ultrahigh vacuum environment for the ultracold atoms. Credit: Chen Lei In a study published in … Read more
Source: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain According to a study by the University of Michigan, up to 60% of objects near Earth could be dark comets. These are mysterious asteroids that orbit the sun in our solar system and probably contain or once contained ice. These asteroids could have been one of the routes for delivering water … Read more
Source: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A researcher working alone, disconnected from the world and the wider scientific community, is a classic but misleading image. In reality, research is based on continuous exchange within the scientific community: first you understand the work of others, then you share your findings. Reading and writing articles published in scientific journals … Read more
Quantum transport simulation of CAR in an approximate QAHI thin film. a, Schematic of the transport simulation setup with a magnetic TI (MTI) thin film in the QAHI state. b, The disorder-averaged electron-to-hole conversion probability. c, The components of local current densities transported by electrons and holes, as well as at the top and bottom, … Read more
Experimental setup for detecting orbital pumping. Credit: Hayashi et al. Electrons inherently carry both spin and orbital angular momentum (i.e., properties that help understand the rotational motions and behavior of particles). Although some physicists and engineers have attempted to harness the spin angular momentum of electrons to develop new technologies known as spintronics, the orbital … Read more